APP PHILOSOPHY

Performance and wellness, personal and professional, individual or group, comes from informed focus and effective practice. This becomes more true over time. Many life factors tend to decrease our ability to stay well, while other life factors increase what’s expected of us – our standards of performance. Balance and mindfulness are natural states that are affected by events, our perceptions of them and our reactions to them. Attaining and maintaining balance and mindfulness is not easy - but it is possible. Similarly, attaining and maintaining performance and wellness is not easy - but it too is possible.

"The focus on mind, body and spirit is the key to integrating performance and wellness."

The focus on mind, body and spirit is the key to integrating performance and wellness. APP believes that fitness of mind, body and spirit is about being physically, emotionally and intellectually functional in everyday life and when stressed. Attaining and maintaining functionality is achieved through consistent effort with initial and periodic intense practice of both doing and non-doing.

"Balance and mindfulness are natural states that are affected by events, our perceptions of them and our reactions to them." When real people find real balance, it isn't perfectly angled or perfectly colored, but it is authentic and more sustainable over time. Photo by Anne Altizer.

Tao Shugyo, or the way of intense practice, is a foundational philosophy for APP that involves:

the thoughtful review of the life domains where one desires higher performance and wellness

the diligent, humble, fully-informed assessment of one's strengths and opportunities and authentic commitment to improve performance

the guided, disciplined development of an integrated, holistic path toward that performance and wellness

the mindful discipline, guided or not, to remain on that path and attain and maintain that performance and wellness

Tao Shugyo is both the yang and yin of the integrated and balanced approach to performance and wellness. Intense practice is not focused solely on activity or being "busy", or working or external achievement at the expense of internal outcomes. It is also focused on allowing oneself to be not active or not busy, to rest thoroughly rather than fitfully and to achieve internal outcomes that enable external outcomes, which is typically the more difficult.

Simply put, when we work, we work intensely; when we restore, we restore intensely. No one can be 100% all the time in anything and "giving 110%" is a false and dangerous concept. Achieving performance and wellness requires integrated practice that is as intense in its non-doing as it is in its doing. Each person needs to explore and understand their personal range of "soft and hard", of "drinking and spitting", of yin and yang in their life.